Messages - Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)

Down by the clock (bottom/right of screen) you'll see a wireless network icon .. normal left-click it, and you should see a list of available wireless networks .. click YOUR network, and you'll be prompted for the wireless key .. enter it and click "Connect" .. you should now be connected.

If I have this right - is a vulnerability exploited by a rogue script on a webpage? If so, would using an up-to-date browser (Firefox, in my case) and enabling UFW (I have) prevent any such script from deploying? Or am I way off beam here?

You're right and wrong at the same time .. most exploits would require local access, and YES some could theoretically be leveraged via a rogue website.(and NO, UFW or an up-to-date web browser on their own would not stop a remote exploit via a website, because you'd likely give permission for it to run)

An up-to-date browser is certainly ONE of the mitigations (or put better 'an integral PART of a mitigation strategy') but it is NOT a fix (or protection) in it's own right.

Current mitigations seem to revolve around making the clock too course grained to allow for the very precise timings required by an exploit .. but new ways to work around these mitigations continue to be discovered, so new road-blocks (mitigations) put in their way .. as I said, there is NO fix for this in software, only hardware. Until the hardware is fixed it'll be a continuously running battle.

All you can do is stay on top of updates .. but you should be doing that anyway right

Although it should be mentioned that as this is a HARDWARE issue (and there's no way software can change hardware) there is NO complete software fix for Spectre and never will be .. it will ALWAYS just be ongoing mitigations against newly discovered Spectre variants, so keep on top of updates.